Scientific American News: Control Your Urges with a Ride on the Mindbus

"Writing in the British Journal of Health Psychology, researchers from Swansea University and City University London
present the results of an experiment in which individuals who resisted
sweets by using mindfulness — a purposeful way of paying attention to
the present moment — consumed less of them.
[...]
For cognitive “defusion,” a term which means to change one’s
relationship with one’s thoughts, participants were instructed to view
one’s self as different from one’s thoughts. They were given a strategy
often used by mindfulness practitioners — the “mindbus” metaphor. An
individual can be seen as the driver of a bus, and thoughts as the
passengers. They were then given a bag of chocolate to carry around with
them at all times over the next five days, and instructed to think of
the mindbus whenever they were tempted to eat a chocolate.

In the acceptance group, participants were told that an effective way of
dealing with food cravings was to simply accept these uncomfortable
feelings, rather than spending effort trying to control them. They were
told about “urge surfing,” in which participants were told to try
acknowledge and ride out the urges, rather than controlling or giving in
to them."